Harris Flung Himself Into 'Pollock' Role / Biopic stars attend S.F. film premiere

Published 4:00 am, Friday, January 19, 2001

Entering a gallery at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art on Wednesday morning, Ed Harris immediately spots Jackson Pollock's "Lucifer," a stellar example of the artist's paint-flinging style. Harris should be familiar with it -- he flung some paint himself copying the work in "Pollock," a new biopic which he stars in and directed.

Putting on his wire-rimmed glasses, Harris peers at the painting. "You can really see Pollock at work here. Look at the green lines. He takes a tube of paint and goes 'whomp' -- like that. I can see the green was applied a little differently than I do it in the movie."

Since the Ed Harris "Lucifer" flashes on the screen for about a second, nobody is likely to notice the discrepancy except possibly art collectors extraordinaire Hunk and Moo Anderson, who lived with the painting for decades before lending it to SFMOMA for the current exhibition. ("Lucifer" comes down after this weekend, so catch it while you can.)

But Harris' obsession with getting the details right is such that if he could, he'd take his movie back and get the green just so.

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In San Francisco for the film's local premiere Wednesday (sponsored by SFMOMA and The Chronicle), Harris told us he became intrigued with Pollock after his father gave him a biography of the artist with a note saying, "Maybe there's a film in this."

"When you start reading about the guy and then you see this physical resemblance I have to him, it just sparked something."

Harris put on 30 pounds to portray Pollock in middle age. That's real dedication -- especially since he then had to take it off.

'SPACE COWGIRL'

Marcia Gay Harden also was here for the "Pollock" screening. She's terrific as artist Lee Krasner, Pollock's wife and keeper, without whom he might not have survived even to middle age. Harden was last seen as Tommy Lee Jones' steadfast girlfriend in "Space Cowboys."

In her next picture, "Gaudi Afternoon," she appears as something other than an appendage to a man. Harden plays a femme fatale in this madcap detective yarn co-starring Judy Davis and Juliette Lewis. The lack of male marquee names may be why the film is having trouble getting a distributor. Director Susan Seidelman has a way with women's pictures, as she showed in "Desperately Seeking Susan."

In "Gaudi Afternoon," the women are desperately seeking a missing husband. Although the action is set in Barcelona amid the surreal architecture of Antoni Gaudi, all the characters are from San Francisco.

"The movie is just full of these very alternative San Francisco types I used to think populated your city," Harden told us. "I was like waiting to see these wild people hanging out of hotel windows."

Harden wandered through the Haight looking for ersatz hippies like the images she remembered from the '60s. But she didn't spot so much as a flower in anyone's hair. "It's not quite as wild and crazy around here as I thought." We miss those eccentric locals, too, and look forward to seeing them onscreen - - and soon, we hope.

Taiwanese director Edward Yang stopped here a few days ago on his way to New York to pick up a best-picture award from the National Society of Film Critics for his touching family drama, "Yi Yi." The personable Yang answered questions after a screening at the Lumiere, then sipped vodka cocktails with filmgoers at a nearby bar. His evening ended in Chinatown, where he dined with San Francisco actress-director Joan Chen.

With all the awards "Yi Yi" has racked up, we were surprised when Yang told us he isn't expecting an Oscar nomination for best foreign-language film. The reason has more to do with politics than the quality of his work. Each country decides which film to submit for Academy Award consideration, and apparently authorities in the Taiwan government are annoyed with Yang. "Basically they want to control filmmakers. I've gone my own way, and they don't like that," said Yang, who financed his film with money from Japan, among other countries, and hired crew members from outside Taiwan. While an Oscar nomination can help sell a subtitled movie in the States, we have a feeling "Yi Yi" will do fine without it.

BEING BOBBY

Steven Culp showed up at the Delancey Street screening room the other day still wearing his hair in that familiar Bobby Kennedy overgrown mop. Culp got used to the style while playing Bobby in "Thirteen Days." However, he no longer sports the false upper teeth he was fitted with for the movie. That would be too Kennedy-esque.

Friends from Culp's American Conservatory Theater days came to the screening. Culp starred in ACT's 1994 production of "Angels in America" as a Mormon in deep denial over his homosexual feelings. The process of preparing for that role or a Kennedy brother was the same. "You have to assimilate all this stuff about a person so it seems natural. The fact that there was so much material about Bobby made it easier. I had a point of reference."

Culp had appeared as Bobby before, in the HBO movie "Norma Jean and Marilyn, " as in Monroe. "I don't really think I look like him, so it's funny that I played him twice. It was really just a coincidence."

-- Here's another really weird coincidence: Movies by both of Madonna's husbands open in theaters today. They would be "The Pledge," directed by Sean Penn, and "Snatch," from the Material Wife's current spouse, Guy Ritchie.